I don't think there's anything more inherently meaningful about a digital vs analog readout, or vice-versa. They're both highly abstract representations of time, it really just depends on what you're used to.
That said, every single event on my calendar, and every single communication about time I have with other people is expressed as a written (or spoken) number, not as a position on a clock face. That makes digital clocks far more useful for me personally; it saves me the extra step of having to mentally convert to digital time before being able to reason about how the time on my watch relates to other events or significant times throughout my day.
To those who prefer analogue watches I have to ask; how does that process work for you? Do you find it easier to mentally convert written times to a visualization of a position on a watch, and then do whatever mental reasoning you need to do in that space? Or are you doing the same thing I would be doing if I had an analog watch; converting it to digital and then reasoning from there? If the latter, why does skipping that extra conversion step by using a digital watch feel worse from your perspective?
Digital easier to read, but I personally think analog is easier to “feel”. I get a much more visceral sense of urgency when the minute hand approaches an anticipated position. And same goes for when the hour hand crawls downward to signal the end of the work day. Seeing it physically close the distance to the 6 o’clock position gives me a much better feel for how much of the day I have left than “3:24”. It really is like a pie chart in that sense.
At this point in my life I am definitely much more used to reading a digital clock so I don’t think you can attribute this to familiarity.
Communications with others are expressed as a written or spoken number. But then calculations with that number (eg. "how long do I have?") have to be done with arithmetic. It's fairly rare that I wear a watch, but when I do, such as at a conference or similar, I prefer an analogue face. In this kind of case I prefer to visualise the time on the clock face. Then I can "see" the time remaining without doing arithmetic.
> If the latter, why does skipping that extra conversion step by using a digital watch feel worse from your perspective?
I'm quite capable of doing it either way, but my preference is to do the single required conversion to "analogue" so that repeated comparisons are visual and do not require repeated arithmetic. I also find it easier to remember a time visually, whereas single-digit errors in remembering a digital time can result in a greater error.
An analog clock is abstract in that it doesn’t show all the details of a globe with oceans and mountains and valleys and trees and lizards rotating and circling a distant light source with massive gravitation that appears to be arcing across the sky.
But it is a reasonable low resolution drawing of it, with some squiggly lines for reference, and arrows pointing in the approximate direction of the light source.
That said, every single event on my calendar, and every single communication about time I have with other people is expressed as a written (or spoken) number, not as a position on a clock face. That makes digital clocks far more useful for me personally; it saves me the extra step of having to mentally convert to digital time before being able to reason about how the time on my watch relates to other events or significant times throughout my day.
To those who prefer analogue watches I have to ask; how does that process work for you? Do you find it easier to mentally convert written times to a visualization of a position on a watch, and then do whatever mental reasoning you need to do in that space? Or are you doing the same thing I would be doing if I had an analog watch; converting it to digital and then reasoning from there? If the latter, why does skipping that extra conversion step by using a digital watch feel worse from your perspective?